Sinners Of An Unknown Degree
by Demeter1
Summary: Children always suffer the most in wars. Minerva McGonagall watches her charges go off to die, to slip into darkness, and to come to Hogwarts with new and painful scars. In ways only someone who has seen the past, present, future, she remembers her grief.


Title - "Sinners Of An Unknown Degree"

Author name – Demeter

Author email - Demeter918@AOL.com or ladydemeter@hotmail.com 

Spoilers - Vaguely for all four books

Rating - PG-13

Disclaimer: All rights and privileges to Harry Potter are trademarks and property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury Books, Raincoast Books and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. The story, the relationships, and original characters within the fic are copyright of the author Demeter.

~*~*~*~*~*~

For all we lost in the first war with Voldemort, I think the ones I remember best are the children. Not just the children who perished in the flames, but the 'childhoods' of those who had lived.  No, not just The Boy Who Lived, but The Children Who Died, and The Children Who Saw. 

They were the real casualties of that miserable reign of terror. 

The children, you know, were so naive at a time. When I taught them, one by one, I saw the flames of innocence extinguish, die out like they were smothered by the simplest wind. I had wanted to curse at the cruelty. 

I still do. Only it's a different generation. 

Children, who might have all turned out differently, were shattered. 

So many that the faces swim in front of my face, each silently accusing me of not protecting them, of not providing them with the haven they should have, the safety they deserved. But what I could do? I was only a professor then. I certainly wasn't a 'Dumbledore'. 

I was stern Minerva McGonagall. 

And the children frightened me the most. One after another, they paraded past me, each name indelibly written in my minds eye, because each, in their own way, suffered because of the follies of adults. 

They were the forgotten sacrifices. 

The ones who paid for what we did. 

We were the ones who created 'Tom Riddle' and "Lord Voldemort'. We were the ones to create curses like Cruciatus, like Imperius, like all the deadly Dark Art curses there are. We are the members of the groups of Death Eaters. 

We were the villains in those wars. 

The children were merely there, forgotten, innocent until we cast that glancing blow that shattered the trust, the love, and the very life in them. 

We forgot about the children. 

After the dust cleared, we patted ourselves on the backs, and lord knows we deserved it. We had seen our fair share of horror. But we foolishly presented each other with silly awards, cheap reflections of what had really happened to garner us gaudy prizes. 

Who cared?

Many didn't, but that was because they didn't see the haunted expressions in the children we, the teachers, saw. 

The ones during the beginning, as we tried to make sure that none would go over to the dark. We concentrated in establishing loyalties to Dumbledore and to our side, forgetting that some came with backgrounds steeped in evil. 

Many had come to us so damaged, that no matter what we did, they would have turned in the end.

It was dark times then. Everyone was worried about the rising evil that seemed to seep from the very blood of the magical community. The edginess promoted a feeling of crucifixion and isolation.

We failed to protect the Slytherins.

They, who had been recruited by Voldemort, because we were so irrational, believing that those who were Slytherin were beyond redemption, that they were already evil and dark, that they didn't deserve our attempts of protection. 

We thought ourselves superior to those who were in the 'dangerous' Slytherin House. 

We were wrong.

How _wrong _we were. 

We had been so preoccupied in trying to protect the other three houses, those of Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff that we completely forgot about the Slytherin. We held our own unconscious prejudices against the age-old house that was founded by Salazar Slytherin.

And _He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Name_ took them. 

Right in front of our unseeing and uncaring eyes. 

Broken, lonely, frightened, which child would not turn to a figure that promised revenge for those who had hurt them, promised fortune, power, luck, love, all the inconsequential things that children want? Which child would have gone against the only *person* who gave them any sort of hope?

Some in particular hold their grips on my mind, like shadow specters that refuse to loosen their spidery fingers. 

Severus Snape for one. 

He had been a student of mine early in my career, and no matter how I try; I cannot reconcile that boy, that pale, quiet, painfully smart boy with the caustic, bitter man of today. And I am one of the few who knows some of what happened between that dubious childhood and doubtful adulthood of his. 

The events that may have caused the dramatic change were all there. But they might not have pushed him over the edge if we had not handled them so poorly. So _very, very poorly_.

Especially that last prank. The one that broke our last, fragile thread of trust. Severus never understood us again after that prank in the fifth year, pulled off by Sirius Black. I cannot believe we traded Severus away for what seemed like a harmless prank. 

But we did. The betrayal had been set. It had happened so quickly; after all, James, Sirius, Remus and Peter were Gryffindors. Even Dumbledore himself admitted in judging too quickly. Far too quickly.  

Even though we were furious with them, unconsciously, we let them off easy. Dumbledore didn't think it serious enough to expel and I felt the scare had been significant so that they needed not to be punished severely. 

And so we asked Severus to not divulge the terrible truth he had discovered. 

In a way, we had asked him to kill himself. 

We were so very foolish. 

His eyes that day. The empty, endless black. I knew, instinctively, the moment I saw his eyes, that we had committed a tragic error. But what could we have done then? Called Sirius back and say, 'We changed our minds and you need to be expelled?' 

Of course not. 

Most of us were wary of the Slytherins, and most of us consoled ourselves when the majority of the Slytherins turned to the darkness, that they would have done so in the beginning anyway. But we knew, we _knew_, that it had been our faults for not guiding them, for not being there to protect the children when they needed us. 

For abandoning them when they needed us most

We had let them be swallowed by the evil heedlessly. 

Voldemort had succeeded in recruiting so many from Slytherin simply because so many just had no idea where else to go. They had been stigmatized purely for being placed in this legendary house. 

And we punished them for it. 

Severus went along, because he had thought we had betrayed him. For a child, an adult that seemingly doesn't care about his life, that tells him the world. He felt there was no use in committing himself to a side that didn't want him. 

When he came back, I nearly wept, for I saw he had been scarred for life. The pale and intelligent boy had all but disappeared. All that was left was suffering soul who had seen the blackest black, who had felt the iciest cold. 

We failed him. But at least he came back. 

Others didn't. 

Lucius Malfoy had entered the ranks the earliest. He, I had no doubt, but parts of me still wonder. The Malfoy lineage was one that was fraught with danger and cruelty. I had seen scars on previous Malfoys. I wondered if something different had happened… I still wonder.

Even Evans Rosier… he had been a sweet boy when he had arrived. When I first saw him, I had thought for sure he would be in Hufflepuff or in Gryffindor. But when the sorting hat had called out Slytherin, I automatically had termed him 'evil'. Over the years, that seemed to pile up on his shoulders… and when he left, all I could see was a cruel man. 

One intent on killing and hurting. 

I wanted to scream about the injustices done to these children… but I knew. _We_ had been the ones to commit these atrocities. 

Because they had been _Slytherins_. And we lost the children. The poor children who perished their childhood and innocence for our foolishness. 

And the rest grew up to know the terror, never realizing that it was _our_ fault for not teaching them. That it was _our _fault for pretending that everything was black and white. The ones who grew to be Aurors especially grieve me. They have lost that part of them that will never be replaced. 

They were trained to kill, worked to destroy. In a way, they turned out the same as the Death Eaters, only they were ostentatiously on the 'good' side.

I wonder how many Aurors came upon old classmates who were Death Eaters, each facing off, realizing that in the end, this was what it came to. 

The horrifying duel of death. 

One by one, they grew up scarred… only to allow their children to be destroyed next. The endless cycle.

The war continued. Battles were fought with increasing intensity. And Hogwarts was still at the center. A new generation, the children of the first that had encountered the idea of Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

And these, I still can see these. 

All those children who came to Hogwarts after the war had ended… none of them had innocence in their eyes. These were the ones who had suffered through the war, knowing nothing in their childhood but terror and destruction. 

They had all been bloodied, defiled, ruined. I remember staring at the crowd of first-years, each gazing at me solemnly, each not expecting much. 

My hands had clenched so hard, that they left scars on my palms. Who had been among them? The first Weasley in a long while had appeared that year. Percy. Another was Oliver, the eventual keeper for the Gryffindor team. I shame to say that I mostly remember only the Gryffindors. The Slytherins were still hard to commit to memory. 

But they were there. 

And they were as outcast as ever. 

The 'slimy Slytherins' still didn't belong to Hogwarts, in many minds. This was at the height of the terror. The Slytherins had become notorious for their involvement… the prejudice was so rampant that many Slytherins chose to disappear to different schools, ones that weren't so adverse to the Dark Arts.

So many children scarred, eyeing me with mistrust and fear. 

And the Slytherins… 

I had looked also at Percy… one of the ones I recall particularly well. His father had been a student of mine and Charlie and Bill had both left legacies that many Gryffindors were eager to repeat. 

How foolish we were again. A child cannot be measured against another; and yet we did. We allowed him to push and keep pushing. And Percy, whatever was left of the child, disappeared. In his stead, he was replaced with 'Perfect Percy'. I sometimes eyed him, wondering where the traits of the Weasley's that had been so notorious, went in him. 

Even more of a shock when I got Fred and George Weasley; they were so different from Percy. Where did the 'Child Percy' go? And I knew. _We had destroyed him along with every other single child in his year. They knew what it was like during the Dark Reign. They knew… and they suffered. _

Who could understand their pain… when they themselves did not know?

All those distant eyes. All the unshed tears for their ruined childhoods. All the senseless slaughter. 

And we come again, another group. 

This time, The Boy Who Lived is among them. I chill every time I stare into those green eyes of his. They are Lily's. His visage and body may be James, but those eyes are irrevocably Lily's. During his first year, I would spend times in my room staring at nothing, just remembering the two. The years would flow backwards, the first of my career finally coming back, each with startling clarity. 

During those times, I would remember Severus, Sirius, Remus, Peter, and all the others. 

I think Harry Potter made me cry more times than all the others put together. 

Now, I still see Severus everyday; I hear the students gripe about him, each word they say painful. I hear bits and pieces of Percy from his brothers, usually complaining. I hear the scorn and hate that's piled on the Slytherins day in and day out. 

And still, I commit the same sin over and over again. I never reprimand the other houses for isolating the Slytherins. And each time I pass a Gryffindor taunting a Slytherin, I pause, wanting to scream… but each time, I pass on, ignoring the pain and dejection hiding behind veils of generations-long hatred and tired disdain. 

More have appeared. 

Another painfully bright, pale, caustic little boy. Draco Malfoy is a thorn in my side at times. But I look into those silver, never gray, eyes of his and they are the same distant, arrogant ones of Severus Snape. The same ones that have hardened and the ones whose lights have started to dim and dull. I see James, Sirius, and Remus in the Trio. And I fear for Draco also. 

I don't want another 'Severus Snape' on my hands. There is only so much I can handle before cracking. 

Oh, I have sinned… along with every adult in our damned world… for dragging this cycle on and on. 

The 'children' have disappeared and they pass it on generation to generation. 

~*~ FINIS ~*~


End file.
